grace period
by Lightfall
Summary: Maysilee and Mallory Donner's birthday always falls a couple of days after the reaping. Mallory celebrates sixteen birthdays and sixteen cakes with her sister, until her world falls apart. Written for Starvation's prompt "icing".


Written for the Starvation prompt "icing".

* * *

Their birthday is just after the reaping.

There's a gap of sorts, time for the grieving families to recover from having their children torn from them before the tributes are dropped in the arena. A grace period.

Their birthday always falls in those few days, and ever since they were children it's been a way to cheer them up after the trauma of watching two children from their district being dragged away to their deaths.

They live in town, above the sweetshop. Going to school in the mornings is a test of will – no eating the merchandise, May, I've told you a hundred times. No, Mallory, you may not have just one.

Their birthday is a special occasion. Doubly special, their mother says, because they're twins. It calls for special celebrations.

On their birthday, every year, they drag their mother to the bakery to choose a cake. There's never much fighting over it – they're more similar than they'd like to admit.

The birthday after their first reaping, both of them are still in shock. The boy was from the Seam, fifteen years old, somebody they didn't even know, but the girl was only thirteen, and in their year at school.

They take the annual trip to the bakery all the same.

"Look, Mal, this one's got flowers on it, isn't it gorgeous?"

Mallory squints at the cake her sister's pointing at, chocolate but iced with pink flowers and swirls. At thirteen they've almost grown out of pink, but today of all days a little reminder of childhood is a good thing.

The cake comes home with them, and presents are opened and thanks exchanged, but Maysilee struggles to eat even her small slice of cake.

"Look, May," Mallory says, her voice soft and kind despite her mother's exasperation, "you've _got_ to eat it, it's birthday cake, otherwise it's bad luck, isn't it?"

Maysilee nods weakly, and finishes her cake.

By their fourteenth birthday, the Games are forgotten, pushed out of their minds by sheer force of will. It'll be back, though, in a few days, when the training scores and the interviews are broadcast. The twins open presents, and for the first time in their lives, none of them match.

Their mother watches the two girls eat poppyseed cake with orange icing, and thanks her lucky star that she still has two daughters. The girl from the Seam who was practically dragged away by Peacekeepers while her friends clung to her reminded Mrs Donner far too much of her own girls and their friend Briony.

They open two presents early for their fifteenth. The soft, paper-wrapped parcels have ribbons around them, but those are long forgotten when the girls open the packages to find two gorgeous dresses, Maysilee's blue with a round, cream-coloured collar, Mallory's green with white buttons. Reaping outfits.

The significance isn't lost on the girls, but as they sit at dinner, hours later, they tick the reaping off in their minds: three down, four to go.

Their birthday arrives, and the other presents are opened. As May unwraps a pair of shoes she immediately judges ugly to the point of unwearability, a present from her aunt, she wonders what a girl from the Seam would say to a gift like that.

She shakes the feeling of unease off. This is her birthday. Enjoy it.

Cake that evening is a sponge, soft and delicate but coated in rich chocolate icing.

"You're not seven, Mallory, wipe that icing off your face!" their mother chides.

Even at fifteen, cake is an enjoyable experience.

The next year, the reaping arrives in the middle of a heatwave. May and Mallory stand either sides of their friend Briony in the pressing heat, feeling cramped among the other fifteen-year-olds. They've always been the oldest in their grouping, but these days that's no advantage when it comes to the view. When they were twelve, an extra year comes in handy to see the proceedings on the stage. But these days, they're shorter than their friends.

Their birthday brings with it a cream cake and plain icing decorated with sugared flowers. Sixteen years old. Their mother has damp eyes as she wonders where her two tiny girls have gone. Taller than her now, and looking like women, almost.

Maysilee gets a canary that year. It seems so silly and yellow to Mallory at first, sitting in its cage making funny sounds, but it grows on all of them. Except their father. He finds it creepy.

"It's the funny way it looks at you," he says. "Like, 'I will escape, someday, and peck your eyes out'."

Both the girls laugh at that. The bird is tame as anything, and when he's not looking, they take him out of the cage, where he sits on their arms, warbling to them. It still can't tell them apart. To him, the two girls are one and the same. From anyone else, it'd annoy them both, but they laugh over it.

"Birdbrain," Mallory taunts, as Maysilee giggles. The bird warbles happily, unaware, cheerful and innocent.

Their next reaping is dry and parched. Mining doesn't need much rain, but their back garden is dead – imagine what it's like in Eleven, May says. No wonder things are so expensive.

The Quell is that year, and from the minute the card is read, everyone is relieved. Four tributes. Their parents still remember having to choose which kids would be sent away. It's not something anyone likes to speak about.

At least this year isn't like that, everyone murmurs. We'll lose twice as many, but at least we didn't send them there voluntarily.

Reaping day arrives, the wind dry, everyone keen to get inside out of the heat.

And the world falls apart, because the first name they draw is Maysilee Donner.

They stand in shock, the two of them, just staring at eachother, and then Maysilee extracts herself from the group of sixteen-year-olds and walks to the stage.

The tears start then, and Briony's arms are around her, and they're both weeping openly now, and it's not right, it's just not _right_, because Maysilee is the sensitive one, the one who cried when they found a dead bird when they were six, and Mallory was the one comforting her, and Briony was the one who was strong. Now it's all gone wrong, it's not supposed to be this way.

The goodbyes are just as bad, but Maysilee, again, is the strong one now. Mallory's the one breaking. She hates herself for it, for crying in front of her sister.

She goes home in total silence, trying not the see her parents grieving. They all know that a skinny girl from District Twelve has no chance of winning.

Her birthday (she wonders whether Maysilee is having something to celebrate, or whether she's forgotten), arrives as it does every year.

The cake is sponge, topped with strawberries. It looks delicious, but it tastes like cardboard to Mallory. The presents get opened, but only half. Half of them, plus one that she took to Maysilee in the goodbyes room, a tiny little thing, her district token. A pin with a bird on it.

"Look, May," Mallory says. "It's a bird. Like your canary. It'll be with you in the arena."

Not much. But maybe enough.

It's not enough. A few weeks later, Mallory watches in horror as a flock of birds descend on her sister, as she screams, as her jilted ally comes running.

She watches as they skewer Maysilee through the neck.

She watches as blood soaks the impossibly green grass.

She stands up, inable to bear it any longer. She walks away, tears streaming down her face.

Mallory stops in her tracks. In front of her, Maysilee's canary sits, yellow and ridiculous, its head cocked to the side in interest? Confusion?

She swipes the cage of the table in frustration, choked sobs and the crash bringing her parents into the room. The bird sits, confused, in its cage, now on the floor.

"Stupid bird," Mallory sobs. "stupid, stupid, stupid bird!"

She crumples onto the floor, wracked with sobs, the yellow canary still staring at her.

She stares at it. "I'm not Maysilee, you dumb bird. She's dead. She's _dead_."

It just warbles cheerfully.

Stupid bird.


End file.
